The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has awarded around US$10.2mn in grants to 67 organisations across the nation to support health and safety education and training for employers and employees
Funded through the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program, the grants aim to advance worker safety and health by providing instructor-led training opportunities for workers and employers in small businesses on recognising, avoiding and preventing workplace hazards.
What does the programme do?
Each year, OSHA selects a set of priority training topics based on workplace fatality data, national safety emphasis programs, and pending regulations. Grant recipients then develop and deliver training on those topics for workers and employers in general industry, construction, and other sectors.
Training priorities focus on:
• Small businesses, which often have fewer safety resources
• High-hazard industries with elevated injury or fatality rates
• Workers facing barriers to accessing safety and health training
The grants fund training and education on hazard awareness, prevention, and controls to protect workers from on-the-job hazards through the development of quality classroom-ready training and educational materials that identify and prevent workplace hazards. Topics may address both common and emerging workplace safety issues and can change from year to year. Grants awarded this year range from developing new fall prevention and protection training materials for employers and workers in the construction industry to providing lunch-and-learning training on fire safety and heat stress hazards for employers and workers in the food truck industry, and developing confined space hazard recognition and prevention training materials for employers and workers in the petrochemical construction industry.
The programme honours the legacy and work of Dr. Susan Harwood who, during her 17 years with OSHA, developed workplace safety guidelines for benzene, formaldehyde, bloodborne pathogens and lead in the construction industry. Harwood was also primary author of OSHA's cotton dust standard which virtually eliminated byssinosis – a lung disease that causes asthma-like symptoms – among textile workers.
